


Something Like Destiny

by JulyStorms



Series: Before Colors Broke into Shades [13]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-11 13:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2069283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion Piece to "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1982700">Your Hand in Mine</a>." Reincarnation AU. Zoë doesn't have dreams; she just <em>knows</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i/iii

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Companion piece to "[Your Hand in Mine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1982700)" told from Hange and Levi's point of view. (You don't have to read the other to get this one, but it might do cool things from a storytelling perspective.)
> 
> I got enough hints to write this little piece that I finally decided to go ahead and do it. I guess the dangled hints in "Your Hand in Mine" in regards to Levi and Hange were just too mean. Since this is an AU, Hange will be referred to here by her first name, Zoë.
> 
> **Warnings** : Domestic and emotional abuse. Hange may seem OOC in this first half for a great many reasons, the biggest being that we don't see her temper; this is the product of an AU and will seem less odd, I think, in the second half when she is older and her past is even further behind her.

 

Zoë doesn't have dreams; she just  _knows_.

She meets Nifa in the first grade, and they're fast friends for six months before Nifa's dad is transferred to a different military base and Nifa moves away. Nobody really understands what's wrong with Zoë—six years old going on and on about how she has a  _feeling_  about Nifa. Her siblings tell her to shut up and her parents try to ignore it because it's weird, but the older she gets, the weirder she realizes she is.

She meets Nanaba in the tenth grade on the first day of class. Zoë's a too-tall, too-thin brunette with messy hair and a pair of glasses that went out of style in the 80s, hand-me-down clothes from her brothers and her sisters, and a reduced price lunch, which is still cheaper than packing. She usually doesn't sit with strangers at lunch, but Moblit is in a different lunch period, and Gelgar's parents divorced the previous year and he'd had to move across town to a different school.

So she scans the cafeteria and her eyes land on someone. She feels it, then, a tugging forward, like something's making her move toward this person whose face she can hardly see from the end of the lunch-line.

Nanaba is a little like her—not poor, not from a big family, but there's something familiar about her that puts Zoë at ease right away, makes her love Nanaba like she's known her all her life. Nanaba's an only child, and her parents are well off. She dresses in worn jeans and t-shirts even though her mother wants to put her in dresses, and to spite her father, who had spent the last 16 years of her life talking about her hair, she took a pair of scissors to her head and hacked all that beautiful blonde hair off.

"It looks nice short," Zoë says around a mouthful of food.

Nanaba grins.

From that moment forward, they are close friends.

* * *

Nanaba's family doesn't really approve of Zoë, and Zoë knows it. Nanaba says she doesn't give a damn what her family thinks of her friends, and it's appreciated, but it still hurts to be looked at like she's done something wrong just by coming over to play video games.

Still, the years pass quickly.

Zoë never does fill out much. She stays tall and thin, and she gets a job after school to buy herself a pair of glasses that aren't humiliating. Her clothes are still embarrassing, but she learned ages ago to just deal with it; she uses her extra money to help her parents and her little brother, who is struggling in school for the same reasons Zoë did. (Nobody's kind to people who are  _different_ , after all. New clothes might keep his life from being a living hell.)

Nanaba fills out less than Zoë, and she grows taller, though not by much. Still, where Zoë is rather plain-looking, Nanaba has striking eyes and a beautiful face.

Despite this, Zoë's the one who gets asked out on dates. She never feels a pull toward any of the boys she goes out with, but by the end of her junior year of high school she's so desperate to be liked and cared about—because fighting for attention at home has gotten tiresome—that she doesn't care.

The attention is nice. Boys take her out to the movies and tell her she's pretty and she doesn't really mind all that much, at least at first, that they're saying it just to make out with her in the back of the dark theatre.

But she's never good enough—at making out, or maybe just at anything—for a second or third date. She knows the compliments are lies, anyway; she has an embarrassingly odd-looking nose and she makes weird faces and she's just too—too enthusiastic about things that nobody else cares about.

Nanaba tells her to stop going out with boys who just want to see if she actually has tits hidden under her baggy clothes, but for some reason she just can't stop accepting invitations out. She wants to be liked. And it's stupid—she  _knows_  it's stupid. She should be happy with herself and she shouldn't let anyone make her feel like she's less than she is, but she  _does_ feel less sometimes, and, while it lasts, a little making out during a crappy film makes her feel like someone finds her worthwhile.

* * *

At the end of her senior year, Zoë meets Rob. He's a few years older and he doesn't tell her she's beautiful just so he can stick his hand up her shirt. In fact, Rob doesn't ever tell her that she's beautiful.

Years later she looks back on the relationship and wonders why the hell she'd stayed in it at all, but at the time she supposes she was just lonely, and Rob was conventionally attractive and didn't lie to her.

Nanaba doesn't care for Rob, but she listens to Zoë talk about him anyway. Zoë's family hates him, especially her older brother and her parents; if she bothers to open her mouth she's told that she should get her priorities straight and break up with him while she has a chance.

She doesn't listen of course. She's too young and too stupid and Rob does nice things for her sometimes, like buy her nice clothes and makeup and little clips for her hair. Her grades start slipping, not that they were ever great to begin with, and her parents get worried, and then angry, and they have a fight.

It's a bad one.

They tell her she's being stupid, that she's too young to be in love, that Rob's trouble—and she runs away. Her eighteenth birthday's already passed, so it's not like they'll come after her. She goes to Rob, of course, and tells him what happened, and he lets her stay with him, lets her unpack her backpack in his bedroom. He lets her cry about it, too, and she hates that she's crying in front of him, but for the first time he doesn't tell her to stop being a baby. He just leaves her there in his room and when he comes back he's got alcohol with him and she's so upset at her parents that she doesn't even care that she's technically not of legal age to be drinking anything.

She spends the next few months skipping school with a hangover and stumbling into her after-school job at a pizza place in town. If people notice that she smells like alcohol, they don't say anything.

Nanaba tries to talk to her, but Zoë doesn't have a phone and none of it matters anyway; Zoë can't process what it is Nanaba's trying to tell her.

She's half-drunk one night with Rob when she mentions college, and that's the first time that she realizes that maybe her parents are right about him. He doesn't snap at the mention; he doesn't yell at her, or call her names, or even hit her.

He just.

 _Laughs_.

Like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard.

"Look babe," he tells her, hand crawling up her shirt, "you're not cut out for that."

And he's fuckin'  _right_ , because she fails her senior year of high school and she realizes she's the opposite of smart: she's stupid. She decides not to go back to school. She keeps working at the pizza place and Nanaba stops trying to get in contact with her.

Rob works nights, too, and they get home around the same time in the evening.

He's always too handsy but she doesn't really mind because it's equivalent exchange, isn't it? He gives her a place to live and she lets him do whatever he wants to her. Even when it hurts a little she doesn't complain, because it's Rob's money that pays the rent and for most of her food and for the car she drives to work. She pays the water bill and for the alcohol, mostly.

One night, she stays at work late to help Rico close up, because it's one o'clock in the morning and Rico doesn't feel very safe staying alone in the building, not after the gas station down the road was robbed just after two o'clock by three men with guns the week before.

She's an hour late getting home, and she doesn't even shut the door behind her before Rob's right there in her face. He's not especially tall or intimidating-looking, but there's still something about him that scares her.

He's not even  _drunk_. He's just mad.

He asks where she's been and she tells him the truth. He tells her to quit her job, and she refuses.

"Enough of these games, Zoë," he says.

"What games?"

"You pretending to work. You don't even have a goddamned GED; you'll never get a real job."

And that's when she realizes she's made a big mistake. Everything blurs together into a rush of shouting: she doesn't remember anything that she says, later, but she remembers every word that Rob speaks to her that night, because every last one of them cuts deeper than any physical wound ever could.

She talks too much and she makes ugly faces when he's fucking her. She's boring in the bedroom and she always smells weird and she dresses like a goddamned teenage boy. She'll never go anywhere in life because she was too stupid to even pass high school. She has nothing to offer anyone: she's not a great lay and she's not pretty and she should be grateful that she has someone like him, someone who'll take care of her, someone who doesn't mind that she's nothing special, because he  _cares_.

She feels sick to hear it, all of it, and she's not sure how much of it's true and how much of it's a lie. Rob's never lied to her, after all; he's never told her she's beautiful just so she'd let him touch her tits. But she walks past him to their shared room and she packs all of her things; everything fits in a grocery sack, everything she's bought herself, every single one of her personal belongings.

And then she leaves.

* * *

She goes to Moblit because she's not sure Nanaba will want to hear from her, not after she'd refused to listen to her advice. Moblit answers the door even though it's almost four o'clock in the morning and he lets her in and neither one of them say a damned thing for a long, long time.

She's the one to break the silence with an, "I'm sorry."

"What for?" he asks. "Zoë, whatever happened… I mean, if you don't want to talk about it, that's okay. But if you do, I'm here. I mean… I leave for work in two hours, but…"

The story comes out in chunks; she's hardly seen Moblit since she's started dating Rob, and she just left him to ask Nanaba about her.

"That guy is a prick," he tells her when she's done.

Zoë's silent, though there's an, "I know," on the tip of her tongue that she can't quite say.

Moblit telephones Nanaba, and Nanaba picks her up and takes her back to the tiny apartment she's renting while she goes to college part-time. She tells Nanaba what happened, too, and Nanaba asks questions, inserts comments, is an active participant in the conversation.

Not that Nanaba knows what to say. She can't say, "I told you so," because it's cruel, but it's true, and Zoë tries to laugh it off, tries to say it herself, but it falls flat and neither of them laugh, and then the next thing Zoë knows, she's crying about it, about Rob, about the fact that she's stupid and even she's not sure why she thinks she's stupid, but she is, just  _so stupid_  in every single way.

* * *

Zoë gets back on her feet and quits working at the pizza place when Rob comes in to try to win her over again.

She gets a job at a grocery store instead, and takes all the hours offered to her because she can barely make rent on her own tiny apartment.

And then she meets Trey.

Trey isn't like Rob. Rob never told her she was pretty, only complimented her when she did something for him, and then the compliment was applied to her like it might be applied to a dog:  _good girl for sucking me off so well_.

Trey doesn't think she's beautiful, but he likes her, and she can tell. Her enthusiasm for things makes him laugh. He seems to enjoy spending time with her.

But he tries to tell her that she can't speak to Moblit anymore, because men and women can't be friends. She disagrees; they make up after a bit of an argument and move on. But he keeps bringing Moblit up, keeps telling her that she needs to stop seeing him because it's wrong.

Since it's the only problem in their relationship, since it's the only contention point, Zoë decides to tell Trey about Rob. Moblit had helped her out after what had happened with Rob, and they're just friends; they've known one another for years and nothing will come of their friendship.

But Trey's response is a disgusted expression and, "So you were a whore."

He leaves in a huff and she breaks up with him over the phone an hour later. When he starts yelling at her, she hangs up on him.

After work that night, as she's heading out to her car with Nanaba, who had started working with her just a few days earlier, Trey walks up to her and starts yelling again, demanding to know why she won't just stop talking to one man so that they can be together.

"Don't you care?" he asks. "Why is everything always about  _you_?"

She thinks she's stronger, now, and when he gets too close, when he's up in her face, she pushes him as hard as she can; he hits his head on the bumper of a car and lies on the ground in a stupor until Nanaba comes back dragging along the night shift manager.

The security cameras provide adequate enough proof that it was self-defense. Trey is sent to the hospital just in case, but he's also banned from ever entering the store again.

* * *

Zoë is twenty and she thinks she's done with dating, but she meets William when she's waitressing part-time. She dumps his meal all over him and he laughs and tells her, when she's frantic and embarrassed afterward, that she's beautiful when she's flustered.

She knows him for a month before she moves into his house. It's a pretty nice house—nicer than any place she's ever lived before. He works for a housing company and he does pretty well for himself. He doesn't try to make her quit working: he encourages her to work.

But then little things start happening.

He starts talking about marriage.

And when she balks at the idea, because they haven't known each other very long, he lets it drop.

But her birth control starts to go missing. He asks her quite cheerfully if she's just being scatterbrained again, if she's not misplacing it, to look again, but she knows it's not her losing it; it can't be. She always keeps it in the same place.

After she's lived with him for two months, he tries not to use protection, and she finds herself pleading with him to just use a condom even if he doesn't think they feel good, even if it's uncomfortable for him, just this one time  _please_. He obliges grudgingly. At first.

But then another month passes and he refuses to use a condom.

He's tired of her games, and he's not going to go without sex because she's too scatterbrained to remember what she's done with her birth control. He can pull out, or she can go down on him, but there's no way in hell he's going to let her ruin his evening by making him sit around with a hard-on. She agrees, but only because he hits her when she doesn't.

She excuses the first blow, of course. She excuses it because she really  _is_  stupid, and maybe William didn't mean it. Maybe it was an accident. She was being difficult and he was frustrated. Maybe she really is misplacing her birth control.

But then he does it again, and she excuses it a second time because she burned her hand on a pot of macaroni noodles and dropped the entire thing on the kitchen floor, effectively ruining dinner after making him wait an hour for it, even though she'd had the night off and should have had dinner ready when he walked in the door.

She lies to Nanaba about where she got the bruises, but they're not too bad; that's what she tells herself. Besides, he doesn't hit her very often.

Six months pass with her living in William's house before he leaves a bruise on her face, and when she goes to work the next morning, her boss tells her that she can't work there anymore, not looking like, well…

There's sympathy in her boss's eyes, and he asks if she needs any help, but all she can say to that question is, "I need this job."

But she can't serve customers with a fist-sized bruise on her face, so she's asked to quit.

And that's her fault, too, for not covering it up. He didn't mean to do it, he loves her, he cares about her; she's pretty and fun to be with and she's a decent cook and he just got  _mad_ ; his fist against her face was an accident.

So she lets it go one more time.

But the next time it happens, she fights back because she's in a sour mood and she's angry that he keeps saying he cares but then he keeps hitting her. These two things are a dichotomy; you don't hit someone you care about, and she knows it, she's known it all along, but she kept hoping that maybe none of it was intentional, maybe things would work out.

But they won't. He tells her she's pretty but why does he always say it when she's anxious or stressed or upset? Because that's how he wants her to be, she realizes.

She's not strong enough to fight him; he's too tall and too strong and he overpowers her with one good hit to her left eye, which breaks her glasses, and then he's pushing her up against the wall, smiling against her neck as he tries to kiss it, saying, "I win."

The fact that he's not even angry, the fact that he's half-hard pinning her there—it's the most frightening situation she's ever found herself in.

Later she doesn't remember what it is she tells him to make him go away, maybe it's a pack of lies or promises to let him fuck her senseless later, but he leaves to pick up dinner and she cries as soon as the door's closed because she's so relieved that he's left her alone.

She packs a few of her things—some clothes, hair ties, her purse—and she leaves. When she stops in town, she stays off of the sidewalk and curls up on the ground behind a diner's dumpster to call Nanaba.

Nanaba's there as quickly as she can be; she's not even dressed, really: no bra, shorts and a t-shirt. There aren't even shoes on her feet.

"Oh, Zoë," is all she can manage at first, but then she takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Come on. Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Zoë shakes her head; her face is throbbing but it's not like it's deadly. Besides, she doesn't have that kind of money to spend.

"Your boyfriend do this to you?" she asks, touching the edge of what Zoë assumes is a bruise forming over her eye.

"Yeah," she says, though she hates admitting it, hates that she's still a fucking idiot. It's no wonder her parents tried to warn her; she never learns.

"You need to go to the police."

Zoë argues at first, but Nanaba convinces her that William'll just find other girls to hit without Zoë there. He might even come after her again: he knows where she works, and next time maybe she won't get away with just a few bad bruises.

They go to the police and Zoë knows it's routine, she knows they have to ask, she knows they have to make sure that she's not lying, but it still makes her mouth go dry when they ask her if she did something to provoke William.

It takes her too long to answer, but she finally manages it, a shaky, "I forgot and put a hot bowl on the new glass coffee table. It broke."

"So this made him angry?"

She tries to remember. "No," she tells the officer, thinking of how, just a few minutes later, he'd pressed himself against her, pinning her to the wall. "I don't think so."

* * *

Nanaba offers her assistance again, helps her find an apartment that she can afford. And Moblit approaches her with information about a job.

"You've always been pretty good with mechanical things," he says, and tells her he's working for an auto mechanic.

"But I never graduated high school," she tells him, and doesn't admit that she was too embarrassed to try to go back. She's too old for that now, anyway.

"You should study and get your GED, then," he says with a smile, and she decides to try.

* * *

She feels smarter when she has her GED; she starts working with Moblit and does an apprenticeship coupled with certification classes at a nearby college.

It's weird to be in a classroom again, but it's nice, too, because she does well. Nobody thinks she's stupid. She cries when she gets a 4.0 for her first semester, and Nanaba tells her that all of her boyfriends were absolute dicks; none of them were right about her, not at all; she's smart and pretty and funny, and fuck all of them for making her spend years of her life having trouble believing it.

* * *

After William, Zoë stops dating. She believes in herself a little more, now, but evidence points to her taste in men being absolute garbage. She's better off not making an effort, but experience has taught her, and maybe she's wrong because none of her boyfriends were ever very nice to her, that there's too much about her that people just don't like. She's not stupid, not intellectually-speaking, anyway, but her hair's always a mess and her nose is weird and she's tired of trying to make herself into someone she's not just so people will care about her.

So she refuses to date, not that many people ask her anymore.

She doesn't have any trouble making friends, though.

She meets Doug in a college class, and Keiji when his dog gets loose at the park and she catches her, and then there's Erwin.

Erwin's the most handsome man she's ever met in her life; he reminds her of a movie star of some kind; he's the kind of handsome that a person sees on television, not in real life. He brings his car in for her to work on and when she meets him there's that pull again—but it scares the shit out of her.

She flirts a little, or tries to, and he laughs at her attempts—in a good-natured sort of way—and then he's gone and she can't breathe and Moblit sends her away from his front counter because she's scaring the customers.

She might have tried harder if she hadn't sworn off dating, but even Zoë's not so delusional as to think someone like Erwin Smith would be into her. He drives a sharp Camaro and he's dressed in clothes that he obviously bought in a big city and had tailored—and she's dressed in coveralls and smells, eighty percent of the time, like engine grease. It's a funny thought, and she regrets ignoring the pull, because it's never let her down before, but she doesn't know what it means this time, and that scares her.

* * *

She gets another chance six months later. She's made head mechanic at her job and she quits working at the grocery store. She loses contact with Nanaba through a phone change that didn't take her old numbers and a move (Nanaba had moved further into the city).

It's raining like hell after work and Zoë finds herself walking in it quickly to try to get home faster; it's a long walk—a few miles—and she's surprised when a car pulls up to the curb. She almost runs away, afraid that it's one of her former boyfriends who have recognized her, but it's not.

It's Erwin Smith again.

He's not driving—someone else is, but that pull is still there, and she feels it tugging on her. Maybe he feels it too; why else would he stop the car for her when he doesn't really know her?

He's polite, and kind, and offers her a ride, but she declines it, says she's almost home (a lie), says she's soaked and will just ruin his nice seats (also a lie—they're leather). But he takes her hesitation as genuine concern and smiles and her and tells her he understands. Then he's gone.

But he sends daisies to her job the next morning, and there's a nice card that can only be read as platonic, so the next time he brings his car in, she has a nice conversation with him and they exchange numbers.

* * *

Nanaba is shopping downtown when Zoë runs into her on accident. They catch up a little bit and exchange phone numbers and it's a relief to be connected again; it's nice to have her old friend back. She's relieved that the pull's still there with Nanaba, but that just solidifies it for her: the pull she feels is important.

Maybe it's silly to call it destiny, but maybe it just makes sense. It's something like that, anyway: she's never regretted befriending people that she's felt that pull toward.

And Nanaba—well, Nanaba had been a lifesaver more than once.

Armed with Nanaba's phone number again, and now enough money to have a nice enough phone of her own, Zoë stays in consistent contact with Nanaba through pictures and short little messages and invitations to spent time together.

* * *

She's twenty-two and it's three days before Thanksgiving when Zoë makes up with her parents. It's weird to knock on the door she used to throw open heedlessly after school, but she does it, and her youngest brother answers the door and then her mom's there, and the next thing she knows, her mom's crying and then Zoë's apologizing and it's all just a big mess.

She eats Thanksgiving with her family that year, and meets two in-laws and one nephew that she didn't even know she had.

She never does tell her parents everything, only that it was all a big mistake and she's sorry she didn't listen to them, but she thinks maybe they know more than they're letting on.

* * *

Moblit takes a new job on the other side of the city and Zoë goes to visit him one day. She hardly pays attention as she puts his address into the GPS; she's borrowing the car from Nanaba, after all, and even though she can fix a GPS (sometimes) she's never really uses one herself.

She gets to her destination safely; it's a nice quiet street in a suburb-y area, and 3796 Fairview is a nice little brown home, two stories with a porch. There's even a swing on it, which Zoë thinks is weird (she can't picture Moblit sitting on a front porch), but he's probably just excited to be a first-time homeowner.

Deciding that Moblit deserves the scare of his life for moving so far away, she doesn't even knock on his door—she just barges right in.

She thinks she finds him in the living room, but when the man sitting on the couch turns around—

Well, he's not Moblit. He's tall like Moblit, and his hair is a similar shade, but he has facial hair and darker eyes and a nose that reminds Zoë a little of her own.

"You're not Moblit," she says, somewhat horrified, but worse is the pull she feels toward this stranger.

"What the heck is a Moblit?" he asks.

"It's a name," she says. "I thought this was his house."

The guy's just sitting on his couch, shirtless and in boxers holding some kind of video game controller, and Zoë wishes the floor would swallow her, because this is not an ideal way to meet anyone, and on top of that, she's feeling overwhelmed by the fact that she knows there's a connection to this guy; she's supposed to meet him, this isn't chance.

Maybe she didn't type the address in wrong—maybe Moblit had given it to her wrong on accident, but she was supposed to end up here with Shirtless Guy for some reason or another.

* * *

His name is Mike, and Moblit's address is actually 3696 Fairview. Mike is surprisingly chill for a guy who's just had his house invaded by a scatterbrained mechanic. He walks her to her car after he pulls on some pants and that's that.

She stops by to see him the next time she drives out to visit Moblit because he's sitting on his porch swing, and that's when they exchange phone numbers. It's clear to her that Mike, like Moblit, is meant to be a friend, and she feels better about talking to him after that; it's ridiculous, maybe, that she should be afraid of someone like Mike, whose nose turns red when he's embarrassed, and who plays  _Mario Galaxy_  when he's home alone on a weeknight, but she can't help it.

She hates that she can't help it, because the more she gets to know Mike, the more she likes him: he's funny and he owns a bakery and he's afraid of spiders because he thinks they're creepy.

That she would ever associate negative things with Mike because he's tall enough and weighs enough to really hurt her makes her feel ashamed. She's never liked having judgments passed on her, and here she is doing it to someone else.

But when Mike startles her by sitting down next to her on the couch suddenly one night, she explains it to him. The, "It's not you, it's me," line sounds clichéd and stupid and straight out of a movie, but this time it's true. It's not Mike's fault that she's made a lot of mistakes in the past and has to pay for them, now.

He listens attentively and then takes her hand.

"Zoë," he says, "you are worth so much more than any of those men ever let you think you were."

And it means a lot, what he says, because she's felt pathetic and stupid beneath her usual go-getter façade for all of her bad past decisions.

Mike gets up, sits in the chair a few feet away, and flashes her a bit of a smile. "It's okay to need time," he tells her, and she tries really hard not to feel those words, but they sink into her and the next thing she knows she's crying, wiping her face on the sleeves of her shirt.

He hands her a box of tissues and frowns. "That was supposed to make you feel better," he says, sounding confused, "not worse."

And Zoë can't help it when she starts to laugh, but Mike smiles when he hears it and leans back in his chair and pulls a movie off of the coffee table.

"I hope you're ready to see the worst film ever made," he says, and flashes the first  _Star Wars_  prequel at her.

She just laughs harder.


	2. ii/iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops this is a three-parter, now. Sunny is a play on Sawney of course; Sunny makes more sense and is a lot less creepy for an AU.

Time passes quickly. Zoë learns things about herself that she's never really had the time to consider before, things that had ended up buried beneath too many years of being lied to and being hurt.

But she finds out that she's good at a lot of things.

She's pretty good in the kitchen. She's not great at baking—that's Mike's forte anyway—but she can  _cook_. And she grills better than anyone she knows. Mike says he's jealous of her perfect steaks and pork chops, but he's smiling when he says it, and when Christmas that year rolls around, the little box he presents her with has an apron in it: it's a really nice one, too, not some cheap thing with a silly phrase on it.

"For the Grill Master," he tells her.

She's also good at fixing cars.  _Really good_. When the owner of the shop she works at retires, she buys the place and makes improvements to it. She hires a kid from the local area named Jean who's thinking about doing the same thing she did—getting certified to work on cars while apprenticing. She has the waiting room re-done, and she finds that she actually really likes her job most days.

The important thing that she realizes, though it takes her more than a few years, is that she's smart because she's driven. She can do a hell of a lot of things if she really puts her mind to it. This revelation sends her to the library, where she starts reading books on plants and gardening and, well, she doesn't have  _room_  for a garden, not yet, but she's confident that eventually she will, and when she does, she'll know exactly what to grow in it.

Zoë reads about animals, too: cats and horses and every dog breed book in the library. She reads about the rise and fall of Rome and Greece and several books about the Black Plague. She picks up popular fiction and reads the  _Star Wars_ novels (at Mike's suggestion) and absorbs autobiographies and memoirs and  _Harry Potter_. Maybe she's annoying when she spits out random bits of information to her friends, but none of them ever say anything about it. Maybe they notice that it makes her happy to learn and share.

* * *

When Zoë is twenty-seven, she's introduced to Sunny. When she meets her, Sunny is named Deanna: a dog with matted fur and a habit of jumping on people.

"That's why she was dropped off at the local shelter," Lynne explains, holding the leash.

Nanaba peers down at the dog curiously. "What is she, exactly?"

"Shetland Sheepdog, maybe, under all that grime."

"I've never had a pet before," Zoë says, but it sounds exciting. She's read a lot about dogs, and herding dogs are kind of funny—energetic but usually not aggressive. And Deanna looks pretty friendly, if a bit dirty.

"Well, Nanaba said at yoga last week that you might be interested. I'm always pulling purebred-looking dogs out of shelters to try to find them a home. Shelters are nice sometimes, but the ones around here don't try very hard."

"Nobody wants a pet if the pictures online suck," Nanaba adds.

"And that's the truth." Lynne tosses her ponytail and holds the leash out to Zoë. "Do you want to maybe spend a little time with her alone? Walk her around the block or something?"

For some reason, Zoë doesn't even find herself hesitating. It's a Sunday morning; she has plenty of time to do whatever she wants, and the silly, giddy part of herself that has always wanted a pet reaches for the leash.

They walk around the block twice, and Deanna pulls and Zoë doesn't care at all. It's delightful, the dog's energy. And it's a nice day. A really nice day. For some reason, everything seems so perfect that Zoë spends the entire walk grinning like a fool.

When she meets back up with Lynne and Nanaba, the latter of whom is leaning on her car, Zoë says, "Her name is Sunny, now."

Lynne grins, bounces up onto her feet, and claps her hands. "All right!" she says. "I'm so glad! I was afraid the jumping might be an issue, but it  _can_  be fixed if you're patient."

Zoë manages to clean Sunny up, and the dog that comes out is fluffy and soft and cuddly-looking, but she can't curb Sunny's jumping habit. She's just too soft, and too sweet, and she knows it's silly but it's nice to have Sunny so happy to see her that she can't stop bouncing around when Zoë comes home from work.

Sunny doesn't work miracles—she is only a dog, after all—but she helps a lot. Zoë finds herself getting out of the house more. She walks up and down the street with Sunny every day, and after she turns twenty-eight, she snaps up a house with a really big backyard that's only a few minutes away from a park. She tries to crate-train the dog, but after a week Sunny is sleeping at the foot of the bed at night, and the crate ends up empty but for a myriad of dog toys.

* * *

She's walking Sunny in the park one evening when she feels the pull again. She hasn't felt it in years, and at first it startles her. She thought that she was done with this stuff; her twenty-ninth birthday has already come and gone, and she's pretty happy; she still gets lonely, sometimes, but Sunny helps to fill the void, and Nanaba is always available to talk to.

She talks to the others less, now; most of them are married, and Moblit has two kids. Mike's just super busy. It's understandable.

So after the surprise fades, she realizes the odd thing about it is that, well...she's not looking at anyone in particular. She just feels pulled in a specific direction, and at the back of her mind she's both terrified and excited.

Another friend sounds nice; it's practically a godsend.

When she makes it to the top of the hill with an over-excited Sunny, she looks around; there are a few people walking together, a kid on rollerblades, an old man pecking sadly away on a flip phone, and one person walking alone.

As soon as her eyes land on the last person, a dark-haired man walking by himself, hands in the pockets of a light jacket, she  _knows_. That's the one. She fumbles for her phone and manages to get a picture, which she sends to Nanaba along with a short message: "I'm supposed to know this guy, too."

Nanaba's reply is quick, and Sunny tugs impatiently on the leash, pulling hard enough to take Zoë stumbling along with her.

"He looks like a sourpuss," Nanaba's text says.

Zoë grins and goes to pocket her phone, but while she's struggling to get the thing in the inside pocket of her jacket, Sunny takes off.

It's practically a scene from a movie, but it's much more embarrassing. Sunny bounds straight for the guy who's walking alone, and Zoë doesn't know if dogs understand destiny, or if she just likes the look of him, or maybe it's because he's by himself on the walking path.

The chase is short; Zoë follows Sunny across the grass, which is still damp from the rain, and muddy in places, and manages to sputter out about a thousand apologizes while she leans down to scoop up the leash and the man looks affronted at the fact that a dog is trying to jump on him.

He's quick enough to prevent mud on his jeans, at least, but not his shoes; his shoes have sloppy muddy pawprints on the toes.

"Sorry," she says again, and cringes, sure he's sick of hearing her say it already. She still manages to say it one more time, "I'm really sorry. She got away from me. Hi."

The look on his face tells her that she should have managed to hold onto her wild beast of a pet, but what he says is, "It's fine."

She's startled by the quality of his voice: a middling tone, rough. She doesn't know what she was expecting, but that wasn't it. She manages to hold his gaze for a moment—but it's a really good moment, because his eyes are grey and kind of hooded like he doesn't care or maybe he never gets enough sleep. She likes them, though, for some reason.

He goes to move past her after what seems to be a brief moment of hesitation, and she wonders if he feels it, too; for her: that pull. But then he's walking off again and she's stumbling after him afraid to let him go but afraid to go after him, too, because something about him is…different.

"Hey," she says when she catches up again, holding Sunny's leash close at the collar so that the guy doesn't get jumped on. "I, uhm, I owe you."

He doesn't turn around, but he does stop. "What?"

"Sunny jumped on you. Your shoes. I mean, you'll have to clean them, now. So the least I can do is buy you coffee or something."

"Look." He finally turns around, and just stares at her for a long time. "It's not that big a deal," he finally says. "I'll live."

"Yeah, but I feel bad."

He looks like he's biting back an,  _I don't care_  but he doesn't say it. He doesn't say anything. He just keeps looking at her.

She stares back. "I'm Zoë. Please let me buy you coffee. It doesn't have to be today." She jiggles the leash in her hand to make her point.

He's quiet for another moment, and then he says, holding out his hand: "Levi." And almost as an afterthought, as she's eagerly shaking his hand, which is surprisingly rough and calloused, he adds, "I drink tea."

She beams. "I know a place."

The next thing she knows, they're exchanging phone numbers and Sunny almost gets loose again and he tells her to quit trying to get her phone out of her pocket; "Just tell me the number and I'll send you a text. You can add me later."

She obliges and, when she's back home in her nice little house, she opens her phone and looks at the new message.

Her eyebrows lift up in surprise.

"Shitty glasses," is all the text says.

Her hand goes self-consciously to the bridge of her glasses, which is held in place with duct tape.

They broke the week before and she was too preoccupied to make an appointment to get a new pair.

Well.

* * *

She waits until she's at the café the next afternoon to text Nanaba that she'll be there. She explains the situation very briefly, and Nanaba isn't surprised at all that she's seeing this guy again. Still, at the end of Nanaba's message is a smiley face and a, "Be safe."

Zoë's a little afraid that Levi won't show up; after all, her dog had nearly mowed him down in the park, and on top of that she'd gotten his shoes muddy (and Zoë doesn't know much about shoes, but his looked pretty nice). It won't really be a surprise if the guy ignores all of her text messages and just plain decides to stand her up—not that it matters. It's his choice to come or not, and if he doesn't want to, well, he certainly isn't under an obligation.

But he does show up and he sits with her for an hour before he says he has to go. Zoë finds that she's rather sorry to see him leave; he's neither talkative nor silent, and she likes that.

She waits twenty minutes at best before she texts him, and she fidgets over the wording for ten more minutes, nervous for some reason; it's been a long time since she's worried what someone might think of her, and she isn't sure if this is a good or bad thing. She decides not to let herself think about it and just sends the text message:

"Can we be friends?"

His response doesn't come for an agonizing hour, but she assumes he's busy anyway: working, and she doesn't know what he does for a living, but there's a chance that he's not blessed with a whole lot of free time while he's on the clock.

"That's up to you, shitty-glasses."

She has no idea what to make of it, but replies with, "I want to be friends."

And his response, delayed again due, no doubt, to work, is: "You can't know that. You don't know me."

Their exchange continues on for a little while, where she argues that that's the point of having a friend: you're supposed to learn about each other. And he argues back that it doesn't really work that way, because sometimes you learn things you don't like and then there's no friendship at all anymore.

"Is it really a friendship if it's so easily broken?" she asks.

"No, but that's what happens when you start out thinking that's what it is before you actually fucking know someone."

Zoë doesn't respond to it because—well, something about it hits a little too close to home, and she spends the rest of the night sitting on the sofa with Sunny staring at a blank television screen because…is that sort of what she had done all those years ago when she'd dated those men? Started out assuming something that wasn't even there?

She's not sure, and it hurts to think about it, and it's all very confusing.

She knows that none of what happened was entirely her fault; it was all a bad decision, a huge mistake, and she refuses to let it ruin or control or even influence the rest of her life.

But  _still_ …she had jumped into those relationships head-first with little thought as to how well she knew them. She'd moved in with two of them before she'd even known anything about them.

So Levi's words stick with her in her brain and she decides he's right. She can't really call it a friendship, can she? She can't really  _ask_  for his friendship, either, right? Because he can't offer her that; they can't give friendship to each other. They don't know enough to say that, to ask that of each other, to call what they do have, which is an hour's worth of discussion in a café and muddy dog prints on white shoes, a ship of any kind.

Right now they're just two people trying to figure out who the other is.

It's seven o'clock in the morning when she texts him and says, "You're right," and, "I'm sorry."

He responds after eleven with, "Want to get coffee again on Friday, shitty-glasses?"

* * *

They go out together a few times as not-friends, and Zoë is surprised by how much she enjoys time spent with Levi.

He's not especially friendly, but he's fun to be around. He's talkative and his standoffish manners aren't really genuine—at least, she doesn't think they are. He says too many things that indicate that he's not a rough jerk like he pretends to be. He's polite in public, for one thing, to waiters and waitresses and strangers on the street, and she knows that's important.

She learns a little more about him, but they're all surface things: foods he likes, television shows he's seen, cars he's driven, where he shops and how often he cuts his hair.

She's just as bad, though, sharing only the things about herself she thinks aren't annoying or embarrassing or uncomfortable to hear: she's the next-to-youngest of six children, she's not a very picky eater but sometimes pasta sits in her stomach like a rock, and she won't drink alcohol.

He never asks her to share more than that, and she does him the same favor by letting him share at his own pace, too.

* * *

They're walking together in the park with Sunny in late November when Levi takes the sleeve of her coat and tugs her toward a bench. She doesn't complain; she likes sitting and watching the park and she likes sitting with Levi especially.

But Levi doesn't sit down. He remains standing and he fidgets and it's so unlike what she's come to expect of him that she asks, "What's the matter?"

Usually he prefaces statements or embellishes them with cuss words, but this time he's just really blunt. "I have to tell you something," he says. "About me."

And she  _knows_  it's bad, but she wants to know more about him, thirsts for more information, and if he's willing to let her in and tell her something personal she's more than willing to hear it. So she says, "Okay," but she's also…

Apprehensive. It's something bad, or he wouldn't be acting so strange. He won't be only telling her little things about his life: insignificant details. She doesn't know how bad it is, but it could be anything at all.

The worst part is that she's afraid he's going to say that he doesn't like her, that he doesn't want to talk to her anymore, that she's annoying or stupid and he's finally had enough of her crap even though they've only known each other a month. She supposes it's longer than some people have put up with her.

It's stupid to be afraid of that and she knows it, because if he thinks those thing about her, well, she's better off without him. But it still hurts—just the thought—because she really does like him a lot.

He takes a deep breath and clenches his hands into fists and says, "I think you should know that I've spent time in prison."

Zoë's mouth goes dry, but she manages a response—a normal one, even. "For… Uhm, for what?"

"Killing someone," he says. And then, looking at the ground, he amends, "More than one someone."

"How many?"

"Two."

She doesn't know what to say to this, and she's quiet for a long time. She's never really known a criminal before; Mike's friend Gelgar had spent some time in jail for driving under the influence, but  _prison_ … Well, she supposes if nothing else, that the way he's acting now, eyebrows drawn together in an anxious expression, he's been struggling with the decision to tell her or not for a while. And here he is, telling her about it. She doesn't know why she finds this almost touching, but she chooses not to question it.

Levi barks out something she's sure is supposed to be a laugh, but it sounds extremely uncomfortable and she can tell he wants nothing more at this moment than to flee the scene and not look back. "At least you're not cracking prison jokes," he says.

She blinks. "Should I be?"

"No." And then, when things get quiet again, he says, "You're not going to ask about it?"

"Sorry," she says, and pushes her glasses up her nose while Sunny wriggles around on the ground under the bench. "I can—I mean, I wasn't sure if that was rude or not."

He snorts. "What, afraid if you offend me I'll kill you, too?"

"Not really," Zoë tells him, and she's surprised to realize that she means it. "If you wanted to kill me you'd have done it last week when I talked your ear off about  _Star Wars_."

This time the sound he makes is more like a genuine laugh. "Nah," he tells her. "That was vaguely interesting."

She smiles at him and then scoots over a little further on the bench to make room for him. She pats the place next to her. "I'd like to know what happened—well, if you're okay with telling me."

He does sit, but he continues to fidget even as he tells her the story.

It's a pretty straightforward tale: Levi grew up in foster homes mostly and when he ended up in a foster home that was downright intolerable, he left and lived on the streets. He's not sure it was a wise choice, even now, to choose homelessness and no education over a roof and schooling. On the streets he met some people quite a bit younger than him, runaways too; one came from a poverty-stricken home where the mother died of a perfectly curable disease because she wouldn't go to the hospital; she was afraid of the state taking her and left before the body was even cold; the other kid had run away because his dad beat the shit out of him whenever he felt like it.

Levi befriended them, and they spent a handful of years together; it was easier than living separately, fending for themselves. With three people, splitting up covered more ground, and they acquired more food and more provisions that way.

But one day, Isabel, the youngest friend, ran into some trouble. Levi stumbled upon a scene that made him angrier than he'd ever been in his entire life.

Just talking about it still riles him up, Zoë notes; he clenches his fists and chews on his lower lip and his eyes narrow down to slits. "They were taking turns with her, you see. I know I shouldn't have done it, but I had a knife and—well."

"You killed them," she guessed.

"It felt justified at the time."

Zoë thinks maybe it's still justified, but she can tell Levi doesn't think that way. "Not anymore?"

He's quiet for a moment, as if he's thinking. "Someone's life… It's not really my call to make, is it?"

And Zoë thinks she understands his meaning, but she doesn't know what to say, so she just nods and puts her hand on his shoulder.

"That's not it," he says. He's not looking at her; he's looking at her hand. But his eyes flicker up to meet hers for a moment before he turns his head and just stares straight ahead. "There's more to it than that. Those guys were disgusting fucking scum, no doubt about it, and it wasn't really up to me to decide if their lives were worth living or not, but because I went to prison I lost Isabel and Farlan."

"What?" Zoë asks before she can stop herself. "Did they stop talking to you? Well, I guess they couldn't go to visit you anyway, could they?"

He turns to look at her again before he says, flatly, "They died."

Her "Oh," sounds pathetic and embarrassed, but Levi shrugs.

"Well, Isabel died. Someone found her in a gutter a few weeks after I went to prison. Her head was bashed in. A metal pipe, probably. I guess it was sort of quick, at least."

Zoë hears the unspoken words:  _I guess she didn't suffer too much_. It still makes her swallow hard to think about some poor girl getting her head beat in with something heavy, then left to bleed out or whatever in a gutter somewhere.

"Farlan just disappeared."

But the implication is still there, Zoë thinks. People generally don't just disappear. Maybe he ran off after Isabel's death to avoid the same fate, but Zoë knows there's just as good of a chance he was dumped somewhere nobody would ever find him. Not until he was unidentifiable, anyway.

"How'd they know it was Isabel?" she asks, though she hesitates a bit. She's just curious, is all. If Isabel ran away from somewhere, nobody would know who she was, would they?

"Someone that talked to us sometimes mentioned her name; it was bounced around until it made it to one of the politicians in this city—well,  _former_  politician, anyway. Erwin Smith."

Zoë's surprise is evident on her face. "I know him," she says. "Sort of. We speak sometimes."

"Yeah, well. He pays attention to everything around him. He remembered the case and brought the picture to me in prison to confirm her identity."

A picture. Of little Isabel's bashed-in face. Zoë shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she says.

"I guess it's better than not knowing."

She's not so sure. Not knowing means there's still hope, after all, but when she thinks about it for a moment longer she decides that not knowing just doesn't sit well in her stomach; she's kind of a decisive person by nature.

"Well, now that I've spewed out my entire fucking life story…" he begins, not quite meeting her gaze.

"It's a friend-like thing to do," she tells him. "Does this mean that you consider me a friend, now?"

"No," he says. "Take this seriously, please."

"I am. I—I mean, I believe you. I don't know that I would have done it differently, had someone hurt my friend like that." She tries not to picture Nanaba from back in high school, tall but rail-thin and with that pretty little face and those startlingly light eyes. If someone had dared to hurt Nanaba that way, Zoë knows she would have done regrettable things, too.

But the important thing is, she supposes, that Levi's shared this with her. It warms her a little bit, because it's so personal. Rob and Trey and William—and all the boys who came before them—had never shared any details of their lives before her arrival in them that might have made them look bad. It's hard to share that kind of information, because people don't want to stick with you after they hear it.

She understands, quite suddenly, what Levi meant by his text message after their first coffee not-date.

"Thanks for telling me," she says.

"Yeah, well." He manages something that looks like a smirk. "We still can't be friends."

"Why not?" She squeezes his shoulder and leans closer to him.

"Because I still don't know shit about you."

It only takes her a minute to decide to open up to him a little bit. She can't tell him about her bad relationships, not exactly, but she does tell him a little bit.

"Well, uhm," she begins, looking down at Levi's hands, which are sitting in his lap. "I am a high school dropout."

"What?" he asks. "You? Spent too much time reading at the library?"

She laughs, but it sounds nervous. "No. I hardly read at all back then. I got mixed up with the wrong people, I guess." And then she feels bad for her sentence sounding deceptive, so she amends it: "Person. The wrong person." She ploughs on before he can say anything. "It took me a while to get my life together, but I have my GED now, and I own a business, so I guess I'm doing okay."

"More than okay," is Levi's response, though he doesn't look at her when he says it.

"Thanks," she says, and wishes she could tell him the rest, but she just can't. Not yet.

* * *

Zoë only tells one person about Levi's criminal history.

Nanaba isn't sure what to think about it. It sounds like bad news, but maybe it's not. They decide to ask Erwin, and as it turns out, Erwin…is Levi's current boss, and he vouches for Levi: to a certain extent, anyway.

"I don't really know him  _that_  well," he says, "but he's not the same person who stabbed those men in a back alley. That much I'm certain of."

Nanaba's fears aren't put to rest, but they are put aside, and Zoë finds herself almost obsessed with spending time with Levi. She's not sure why, except that Levi's really nice to talk to. He always listens to her, and he hardly ever tells her to shut up; when he does act rudely there's usually a decent reason for it, like she's talking over the movie ("Shut up or pause the movie, four-eyes.") or he actually has to go to work and she's not letting him tactfully leave.

She spends the winter months with him, just watching movies and television and reading books together and—well, Zoë's not sure what to make of any of it.

"Are you dating him?" Nanaba asks when they get together for lunch one day.

"Uhm, no," Zoë says, but she finds that she's not entirely opposed to the idea. Levi might be shorter than she is, but that's the last thing that actually matters; after all, all of her precious boyfriends were taller, and none of them were worth her time.

"You sure?" Nanaba's tone is sly, but the look in her eyes flashes worry. "You talk about him all the time."

"I like him," Zoë says, but it's not really a defense; it's just the truth. "I just… He's…"

"Too sour?"

Zoë laughs. "No, he's not really sour at all. He's just… I doubt he's interested."

"The man spends like forty hours a week in your presence and you don't think he's interested in you?"

"Well, not like that," Zoë says.

Nanaba looks like she wants to argue, but she doesn't. She just says, "Well, how do  _you_  feel about  _him_?"

"I don't really know," is what Zoë says, but the truth is that, well… She really likes him.

She likes Levi more than she should. The time spent with him is a lot—Nanaba may not be exaggerating—but it never feels like enough.

And when he touches her for any reason, she doesn't want him to stop. It's dumb that his hand on her head or his elbow in her ribs makes her chest feel fluttery. She hasn't felt that way for a long time, and the last time she did, it was because some guy had his hands on her boobs or his fingers between her legs—not because he was just  _there_  doing absolutely  _normal_  things.

She thinks maybe she's gotten a little too old and a little too weird. Maybe it's just been so long since she's had sex that her body is jumping at Levi's physical proximity.

But it's not just that, either. Even his stupid nicknames make her smile, and the sound of her phone going off when he texts her makes her roll around on her bed grinning like an absolute fool; it's especially ridiculous because he never really says anything particularly funny or sweet.

When she complains about her neighbors doing renovating on their house at godawful hours of the morning, Levi presses a spare key into her hand and says, "There's always the couch if you decide you can't stand it for the next few weeks. I get home at two o'clock but I'm not noisy about it." She savors that touch for a moment too long and when he pulls away she has to focus on the cool metal of the key in her palm to keep from blushing at her own silliness.

"Thanks, Levi," she says.

"I hate rude neighbors," is what he says, but he's almost smiling. He doesn't say a thing when she takes advantage of his offer and crashes on his couch for the next two weeks to avoid the hammering that starts at six o'clock every morning in her neighbor's kitchen. But Zoë's surprised to wake up to him ruffling her hair when she sleeps in too late, and it's so nice that she almost doesn't want to get up.

"Get out of bed, lazyface," he tells her, and disappears for approximately two seconds. The next thing she knows, he's tipped the couch up and she's tangled on the floor in his spare blankets, hair sticking up and looking amazingly ridiculous.

She's embarrassed by it, but he doesn't comment on her appearance at all.

He just says, "You're going to be late for work if you don't hurry up."

And that puts her heart at ease. She doesn't know why she thought, for just a moment, that he might tell her she's gross or disgusting or ugly. She pushes the thought aside and tells herself that, well, of  _course_  he wouldn't. Levi's not interested in her like that; he doesn't feel quite the same way. So naturally he won't care what she looks like.

She peels herself off the floor and gets ready in Levi's little bathroom and he even presents her with a passable breakfast before she goes to work.

She hates that the only-tolerable eggs taste much better than they should; she knows it's because he made them.

* * *

She invites Levi over for dinner on Saturday night because he's never tasted her cooking, not her  _real_ cooking (and all he ever has on-hand in his apartment are things that lead to an early death). It's high time he eats something semi-healthy; she's going to make him the best meal he's ever had in his life.

"You don't look like you can cook," he says.

"Just you wait and see."

So Saturday night he's sitting with her on her deck and she's cooking in the kitchen and running back out to the grill and Levi is left fidgeting in a chair pretending to read a book. She can tell he's not actually reading because she hasn't seen him turn the page once.

"You look like a chicken with its head cut off," he tells her, eyes lifting just long enough to catch hers before he breaks the eye contact by dropping his gaze back to his book.

"Best meal you've ever had!" she practically sings at him.

They banter back and forth as Zoë runs to the kitchen and back out to the deck. It eventually draws the attention of her neighbor.

"Goddammit can you keep it the fuck down?" the man asks, sighing at her from over the low fence to the side of his property. "We just got the brat to sleep and your crazy antics— _Levi_?"

Zoë stares as her neighbor steps over his fence, walks onto her deck uninvited, and approaches Levi.

"Whoa, it  _is_  you. You know this crazy woman?"

"Her dog tried to kill me."

"Sunny tried to  _befriend_  him," Zoë corrects. "Auruo, after I've had to listen to you hammering like a douchebag at six o'clock in the morning for the last two weeks, the least you can do is let me grill in peace."

"You're yelling too loud," he complains.

"You're just jealous that you burn your steaks and mine are always perfect," she snipes back.

"Auruo?" Petra's voice floats in from the other house through their living room window. "You said you'd help me put all this laundry away!"

"Argh, the nag's naggin' again," Auruo mutters, but the grin on his face tells Zoë that he doesn't mind.

"Nice seeing you," Levi says.

"Yeah! Great seeing you, too. And uh, we're still sorry about your car."

"It's fine."

Auruo leaves then, and Zoë can hear his ridiculous fake bickering with his wife from her deck. Who's being loud, now?

"Shit!" she curses, and runs back into the kitchen to keep the green beans from boiling over.

Levi followers her. "So your neighbors are Auruo and Petra?"

"Yeah," she says, nearly burning herself from the steam as she drains the green beans using only the lid against the pan to create a gap for the water to leave. "Auruo's a bit of a goof, but Petra's nice."

"I didn't know they had a kid."

"Yeah? I think—three months ago? Petra was puffed out like a balloon."

Zoë pushes a hot pad onto the table and places the green beans on it before she rushes back out to the deck to get the steaks off of it.

"So how'd  _you_ meet them?" she asks, plopping them on a plate before she closes the grill and heads back inside.

"Car accident. Auruo rear-ended my car. Apologized a thousand times like someone else I know," he side-eyes her, but looks amused. "I guess he thinks I'm pretty cool for some reason."

"Because you  _are_  pretty cool," Zoë says, and sits down at the table. "Okay, eat up."

"Best meal I've ever had?" Levi asks.

"Damn straight it will be."

And it  _is_ —or at least, one of the best. Levi nods as he eats, and it looks appreciative. Zoë doesn't pay a lot of attention to him—well, she does, but she's discreet about watching him eat. There's plenty of food, and Zoë never eats much, but Levi packs away more than anyone his height has a right to. When he's done, he pushes his plate away and sighs a little.

And then he says, "That was pretty good, four-eyes. But I think it was missing something."

She pauses, chunk of a baked potato halfway to her mouth, and tries to think about what could  _possibly_  be missing. She even has ice cream in the fridge for dessert later, which Levi knows about, so that's not it.

It hits her like a freight train; her fork falls to her plate with a clatter and she almost falls on the floor in her haste to get out of her chair and to the oven.

She opens it and there's no smoke or anything, but the pan she pulls out looks absolutely miserable. "Ahh," she complains, dropping the pan on the stovetop. "The rolls are burned."

Levi looks like he's about to die, mouth so thin it's almost gone.

Zoë stares at him. "You knew, didn't you?" she accuses. "You  _knew_  and you let them burn  _just so you could say it wasn't perfect_."

Levi bursts like a dam, fist pressed to his mouth as he laughs. He calms down remarkably fast, and then says, voice serious again, "Maybe."

She blows a raspberry in his general direction, and he gets up from his chair and grabs the plates and starts loading the dishwasher as Zoë washes off the table. It's kind of nice not to have to do all of the work herself, but it's even nicer that he helps of his own free will.

When she's washing one of the pans that can't go in the dishwasher, he finishes loading it and starts it for her, and then walks up to her holding a towel. He tugs gently on her ponytail.

"If there had been rolls it would have been perfect," he says, and accepts the pan after she rinses it off.

"Yet you still let them burn," she tells him, and tries to look indignant, but the look on Levi's face—definitely amused—says that it's not working at all. "Some friend you are," she adds.

He lifts one eyebrow. "I'm helping you with the dishes, four-eyes. That's pretty good, I'd say."

She supposes he has a point there.


	3. iii/iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter. Thank you for coming along for the ride! This chapter turned out differently than I expected it to, so feedback would be much appreciated!

When the dishes are finished and everything is put away, Levi doesn't leave. The next thing Zoë knows, they're sitting on her little couch together watching a movie neither one of them has seen on Netflix. She never invested in a real couch, just a loveseat she found in a yard sale once, and she sort of regrets it because her left side is touching his right side, and it's nice but it's also nerve-wracking.

She can hardly pay attention to the movie to begin with, but thirty minutes into it he shifts beside her and his fingers are sliding in between hers. He's looking at her television, but she's staring at their hands, heart pounding so hard she can feel it up in her throat.

She wants to apologize for her gross, sweaty hand, but he knows it's sweaty because he's holding it and she doesn't know what to do so she just doesn't say a damn thing, and spends the rest of the movie feeling—something. Scared, maybe.

It's easy to imagine being smooth and confident. If he tries to kiss her, she can  _imagine_  kissing him back, running her fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck, pulling away and saying something flirty, but she knows if he does kiss her she won't be able to respond and then she'll stammer out something stupid and it'll all just be a big mess.

Maybe he can tell from her clammy hand that she's an absolute wreck, because he doesn't try to kiss her. When the movie's over ("And it was fucking terrible," he says, as if he knows she wasn't watching it) he just squeezes her hand and lets it go to tug on her ponytail.

"Thanks for coming over," she tells him, and is surprised at how calm her voice sounds.

"It was nice," he tells her as he gets to his feet. "Rolls would've made it better, though."

And then she feels safe again, comfortable even, and she hugs him before he heads out to his car. It feels natural and nice and warm, and it's the first time she's hugged him but it feels familiar.

And she doesn't want him to go.

But she lets him because she's also too afraid to ask him to stay; she knows she'll never be able to explain to him what exactly she means by her request. Even she doesn't understand it herself.

* * *

Things do progress, after that, though. She plants a little garden and Levi comes over to help her. It takes an hour to figure out the tiller she's borrowed from Mike and they get a row of tomatoes and half a row of beans and three cucumber mounds made up. Both of them are dirty and gross after a couple of hours but Levi doesn't seem to mind; he's not wearing nice clothes and neither is she; they both look like slobs and for some reason this makes Zoë feel more comfortable around him.

How it starts is uncertain, but Levi makes a comment when she wipes the sweat off of her face with the back of her hand, and then they're goofing off like children in the freshly tilled dirt, pushing and shoving and carrying on in a way that Zoë's sure will annoy the heck out of her neighbors.

She's laughing and smearing soil on Levi's face when he kisses her.

It doesn't last long. He pulls away before she can really respond to it, leaving her wide-eyed and confused; he looks embarrassed and mutters an apology but won't meet her eyes.

"It's okay," she tells him, feeling overwhelmed. "What was that for?"

"Because I like you, stupid. Why else?"

But she doesn't really understand it, because she's sweating and gross and covered with dirt and so is he, and he likes things neat and tidy and smelling fresh. It doesn't make any sense.

* * *

Nanaba doesn't like Levi. Well, she doesn't hate him, but she doesn't trust him, either. Zoë wishes everything wasn't so complicated, but there are a lot of things against Levi. He's not a gentle person by nature; his mannerisms are awkward and crude even on his best days. And Nanaba knows about his time in prison.

It's not that Nanaba doesn't trust Levi, though, Zoë thinks. It's that she doesn't trust  _her_. Because she's messed up so many times. She's refused to listen to the advice of other people and she's been hurt in more than one way because of it.

But Nanaba knows that Zoë is starting to feel things for Levi—things she can't hide anymore.

"You talk about him all the time," she says over the phone one night. "What's going on?"

"He—uhm. He kissed me," is her reply, but when Nanaba tries to ask what the kiss led to, Zoë doesn't have an answer. It led to…absolutely nothing. Levi had backed off; after a bit of dinner he'd gone home, and their lives had resumed as normal.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Nanaba asks.

"What?"

"I don't know—loving this guy."

As if Zoë has a choice in the matter. As if love is something a person can control every moment of every day. She knows Nanaba doesn't mean it like that, though. Nanaba means well.

"He's…a good person. He's made mistakes, but haven't we all? His just—there was a higher price. And he's—"

 _He's good to me_  is what she wants to say, but she can't get the words out. And when she can't speak, Nanaba intervenes with a soft voice.

"He's never put a hand on you, has he?"

"No. Never." She can't even imagine Levi hitting her, not on purpose, not with anger or with the intent to actually hurt her. She's positive that Levi will never leave her face covered in bruises.

But mostly she thinks of how he kissed her when they were sitting in her freshly-tilled garden. It was—it was kind of nice; he'd touched her face, and kissed her and it only lasted a second; she hadn't felt the least bit trapped or anything.

But she's been wrong before, and that price had been much too high.

So when Nanaba says, "Be safe, Zoë. That's all I want."

Zoë is certain to whisper out, "I'll be careful."

* * *

The next time Levi kisses her, they're sitting on her couch again watching another movie. He takes her hand first, and when the action makes her glance away from the movie and at him, he pulls her down and kisses her for the second time. It only lasts a few moments. He's careful and he squeezes her hand. The fingers of his free hand brush her hair behind her ear where it won't quite stay, but he keeps trying anyway, or maybe he's not trying and all and just wants to touch her.

When he pulls away he asks if she's all right, and she realizes that she's trembling.

"Oh," is all she says.

To Levi's credit, he doesn't get up and leave her there. He seems genuinely concerned about the way she's acting.

"Look," he says, and she knows he's trying really hard to figure things out. "If you have a problem with me doing shit like that, it's fine."

"No, that's not—I…" She doesn't know what to say, exactly, because everything is so muddled and he just kissed her—a real kiss, this time, soft and gentle, his mouth moving against hers.

"Friendship is fine, if that's all you want."

As if he's thinking of something else—something more. She tries not to shrink back against her couch, tries not to hide in the cushions, but she can't help herself. And Levi notices it. He lets go of her hand, but she doesn't let him and she's not sure why. Her heart is pounding and she feels sick and her mouth can't form words for some reason. Levi settles back at that, squeezes her hand a bit, stares at the television instead of her, but neither one of them are actually paying attention to the screen, not right now.

She licks her lips and ventures, "Are you mad?" Her voice comes out so softly that she's not sure he can even hear it.

Not until his reply is, "What? No. But I wish you'd tell me what the problem is."

She fumbles with the remote; it takes her three tries to pause the movie. Levi takes the remote from her and shuts the television off.

"Look," he says, and she can feel his eyes on her; she's too embarrassed to look at him, though. "It really is okay if you don't want—you know. Anything. With me."

She's silent for a moment, but she plays with his hand, her fingers brushing against his self-consciously. "That's not it," she says. "I just…"

And she can't say it:  _I'm scared_. It sounds so stupid even in her head. There's nothing to be scared of. It's just Levi, and he's been so nice to her.

So she forces a laugh. "It's been a while," she ends up whispering.

It's Levi's turn to fall into silence. He touches her hair, though, and tries to push the loose strands behind her ear again. "Same," he finally admits. "A really long—before…prison." He fidgets a bit, squeezes the hand he's still sort of holding. And then he lets out what sounds like a long-suffering sigh.

"I'm sorry," she tells him.

"No, it's fine. I'm the one that's—it came out of nowhere. Goddamn. I've always been—like this."

"Like what?" she asks.

"Awkward as hell," he says.

It makes her smile. She's the awkward one. Her heart feels so fluttery when he's around sometimes that she can't—she can't think straight, and she likes just sitting with him, talking; she likes everything about him.

But she's so afraid of messing up.

And she's more afraid of telling him so.

But she knows what she wants and Zoë is, if anything now, willing to work for what she wants.

"Me, too," she says, voice stronger. "Let's… Let's try it again. It was nice before. I just wasn't—it's been a while, and…"

"It's been longer for me," he tells her.

"Yeah? How long?"

"Since I was a teenager," he admits, and she can see his face turning red—just a bit.

"Yeah?" It almost makes her feel better.

Almost, because her real issue isn't the lapse in time since she's last let someone kiss her. It's the fact that the last few people she let kiss her had ended up hurting her. She'd grown attached to them in unhealthy ways and then they'd hurt her with words or their fists or with whatever was laying around. She wishes it was a time-lapse issue. Inexperience seems better than bad experiences.

"Yeah," he says. "So if it's really bad, just—say something, I don't know."

"Okay," she agrees.

And then there's an awkward moment where they're both afraid to close their eyes; they're both afraid to lean toward one another; they're both afraid of this stupid little kiss, when moments before he'd done it so simply, almost as if he hadn't really considered doing it—he'd just acted because it was what he wanted to do in the moment.

But then they're kissing, and her nose is too big and weird again—it bumps against his cheek too hard and stings a little, but he doesn't seem to notice, and she's glad for that. This is a longer kiss than the last one. She holds his hand too tight, but he's doing the same thing to hers. She gets to really kiss him back this time, but she's hesitant and nervous and very unsure. She hasn't forgotten any of the things her ex-boyfriends said about her—about how she wasn't a very good lay—and she wonders if she's garbage at kissing, too. She's probably too slobbery or something, and she tries really hard not to be bad.

When he pulls away, tugging gently on her hair, she gives him a nervous laugh and can't quite meet his eyes.

"That bad?" he asks. "Shit."

"No," she assures him. "Was it—was  _I_?"

"No," he says. But he doesn't kiss her again. He leans against her and turns the television back on and hits  _play_  on the movie. She's not even aware that she's trembling again until he says, "You don't have to be nervous, Zoë. We have time."

She's not sure if he means that they have time in general, or time to figure it out, or time for—for practicing. "Practice makes perfect?" she tries.

He smirks, giving her hand a squeeze. "And too much practice makes you sore or something," he tells her. And then, a moment later, as her face begins to heat up, he says, "Goddammit that sounded—never mind."

She laughs a bit at that, at his awkwardness, at how endearing it actually is, sometimes. "It's true from a literal standpoint," she tells him. "If you work out too much one day, you will be too sore to do the workout the next day."

The rest of the day goes smoothly. He kisses her good night, but it's quick and simple and it's not—it's not anything she has to worry about.

* * *

Levi makes it easy. She feels comfortable around him because he can make fun of himself and his mistakes and kissing him is something she really starts to look forward to. They never do much—he kisses her face, sometimes her nose, her cheek—but it stays simple and she's grateful for that.

Zoë wants to tell him about her past, because he's told her about his, but every time she opens her mouth to bring it up, she just gets scared. She convinces herself that the time isn't right or that she'll ruin the nice moment they're having if she says anything, but the truth is that she's afraid of what he'll think of her when he finds out. And maybe that's stupid, because she knows none of that was really  _her_  fault, but that doesn't mean that he won't think she's dumb for staying in those relationships for so long.

The fact that she really doesn't know how he'll react to her embarrassing history is what keeps her from saying anything.

* * *

Her hesitation is a mistake in the end. Levi finds out about her history eventually. It comes from her own mouth, too.

She stays at his apartment sometimes, and one night he comes home from work a full hour early. He's in a good mood when he gets home. She doesn't realize he's even there until he comes into the bedroom; she's sitting on his bed watching TV.

"Hey," she says when he sits next to her, and automatically turns her head to get a kiss.

He always kisses her and then heads immediately for the shower. But this time he doesn't.

This time, he pulls her close and sighs against her mouth when she kisses him back. The way he nibbles at her bottom lip is playful. It's easy to forget whatever program is on the television, and she loses herself in this ridiculous little game they're playing on his bed at one o'clock in the morning. She's the one that eventually puts an end to the play-wrestling; she lets him pin her to the bed, but she pulls him down and gives him a real kiss. One of her hands is in his hair and the other holds his arm, which he's trying to use to support his own weight.

She moans a little when his hand grips her hip and his thumb presses hard into the dip of her waist. She's not sure if she's doing anything right, but he lets her slip her tongue into his mouth—lets her fumble her way around like a nervous teenager.

When they finally do pull apart, it's only brief—he keeps coming back for little kisses. After he places one right on the tip of her nose, he lets himself just fall on top of her, and presses his face into the side of her neck.

She's not aware of what happens next, not really. Levi tells her later, says that he'd said her name and kissed her neck, and then she'd gone rigid like she expected something horrible to happen, like maybe something horrible  _was_  happening.

The next thing she  _is_  aware of are feelings and vague bits of memory as if seen through distorted glass. She's pinned against a wall and her face is throbbing and her glasses are ruined and there are lips against her neck and he's saying something—someone is, only she can't see his face; she can't see anything but the broken coffee table in the center of the living room over his shoulder. Her eye's swollen and her head hurts and he's pinning her so closely to the wall that she can tell he's half-hard and wanting her; it's scary and she's afraid if he fucks her now, he'll kill her if she's not good enough or get her pregnant or—

She's not sure what it is that brings her back to the present. Levi's voice, maybe. When she blinks enough, she can see him kneeling on the bed next to her. He's saying something, but she can't concentrate enough to hear the words; his eyebrows are drawn together in concern, though, or maybe fear. Probably both.

She realizes her fists are clenched and forces her stiff fingers to uncurl.

"Sorry," she says, and doesn't quite manage to laugh. She doesn't know why she's lying, only that she's not sure what else to say. "I'm really bad at this."

Levi doesn't buy it for a second, but he acts afraid to come closer, and that frightens her. "I think we need to talk," he says.

She can't look at him. She just picks at nonexistent threads on his comforter.

He sighs. "I'm going to—I'm going to take a shower. And when I get out, we are going to talk about…this."

He takes fast showers, never more than ten minutes. This time it's five, and she spends the entire five minutes trying to calm her breathing. She is only half successful. It's too difficult to remain calm when she knows she's going to have to talk about whatever it is that just happened. She's not even sure herself what that is.

When Levi returns, still toweling his hair dry, she asks, hesitantly, for him to fill her in.

He explains, briefly, and then says, "Zoë, you scared the shit out of me. I thought I'd—"

"It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything."

But it's not that easy—nothing is ever that easy. He wants to know what happened and she's honest when she says that it's never happened before, but Levi's also the first man she's even attempted to be intimate with since her last boyfriend, so it may or may not mean anything.

She tries to wriggle out of a real explanation by saying, "I was in a couple of bad relationships when I was younger," but Levi sits next to her on the bed and combs his hair out and raises one eyebrow.

"Bad?"

And then she's biting her lip and trying not to talk about it because she's afraid again—of what he's going to think of her after all this—and he puts his comb down and touches her hand.

"Look," he says. "I'm shit at this stuff. I want to know about you."

She doesn't cry, but she doesn't want to look at him, either, even though his expression is the same as it always is, if a bit concerned. In the end she hunches over and presses her face into his side and then he's pushing her away. Her heart almost stops in the moment it takes him to pull down the blankets on the bed so that he can slip under them and lift up her side so that she can join him. She curls into his side again and he stares at the ceiling and says, touching her hair,

"You can tell me."

So she does. She tells him about her stupid teenage years, going out with boys just because they would pay attention to her, even if the only reason they'd listen to her talk was to see if she actually had boobs.

And then she tells him about Rob, and Trey, and when she mentions William, Levi brushes a finger over her lips.

"This one hit you, didn't he," he says.

"Yeah," she admits. She doesn't tell him all of the details, but she tells him about that last day, the worst one—where he'd broken her glasses and she'd realized a lot of things about her were kind of broken.

When she finishes, he's quiet for a long time, and she's afraid to look at him.

"Are you afraid of me?" he finally asks.

"No," is her response, and she means it. "I'm sorry I reacted that way."

"Shut up," he tells her, and ruffles her hair. "None of that shit was your fault."

It doesn't mean  _more_  coming from him than it had coming from Nanaba all those years ago, but it's still a relief to hear. "Thanks, Levi," she breathes against his side.

"Hey," he says, sitting up and tugging on her arm. "Look at me."

She's hesitant to do so, but she sits up after him and make herself meet his eyes. He's not smiling, but he doesn't look upset, either. He touches her face, brushes his thumb over the eye that William had bruised so badly years earlier.

"Nobody's ever going to do that to you again, Zoë. Got it?"

For some reason, his words cause tears to start sliding down her face.

He pulls her against him. "Look, you're great. Sharp as a razor—not those disposable pieces of shit, either. Your nose is—I don't know. I love your nose. I don't need a goddamn reason to love it. Or you."

"What?" she asks.

"Fuck. I didn't mean to throw that out there like a stupid teenager." He pulls her off of him and taps her nose with his index finger. "Too late, now. I said it."

She lifts a hand to wipe away some of the wetness on her face. "Do you mean it?"

"Yes," he says, "but I wasn't fucking finished so shut up and let me finish. What else did these lying sacks of shit say to you? Oh, right—that you'd never get a  _real job_ , whatever that even means. Are some jobs fake? Fuck that. You run your own business and you're good at it."

"Levi—"

"I'm still not finished, shitty-glasses."

She smiles; she can't help herself. Levi's not especially handsome. He's not a talented speaker, either. He's just himself, all the time. His attempts to cheer her up—at least, she  _thinks_  that's what they are—show that his awkward confession, well, it's real. He means it. He does care.

She buries her smile against his shoulder and when he asks her what the heck she's so smiley about, she pulls away and touches his nose, making him blink. "I love your nose, too," she tells him, and doesn't even try to wipe the stupid smile off of her face. "And you."

He stops talking, and a few moments pass before he opens his mouth again. "Well," he says, slowly, hand settling on her hair. "Good."

* * *

After Levi falls asleep, Zoë sneaks into the bathroom and calls Nanaba.

"I'm sorry to wake you," she says, whispering.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. I just… I just want to say thank you."

"Zoë? Are you sure you're okay?"

"Sorry," Zoë says, voice starting to wobble a little bit. "I'm okay. I promise. I'm more than okay. I just. I wanted to talk to you."

"What happened?"

"Levi and I were fooling around and," her throat feels swollen suddenly, and she forces the feeling away, makes herself continue, "I had, uhm… I flipped out on him."

"You yelled at him?"

"No, I had uhm. I was remembering the day when I called you to come and pick me up. Behind the diner."

"A flashback," Nanaba supplies. "You had a flashback? Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," Zoë tells her. "I just. Levi made me talk about it. About all of that stuff."

Nanaba is quiet for a long time before she says, "You never told him about it."

"Not until tonight," she admits. "And he, well…" Her voice gets wobbly again, and she thinks she might cry if she says too much. "He was really patient and understanding. We talked about it and…we'll go slow. He doesn't want to make me uncomfortable."

"I'm glad," Nanaba says, voice so soft that Zoë's not sure at first that she heard it.

"And he—uhm. He told me that he loves me."

"And…you?"

"I said it, too. He—he said that I'm smart and he likes things about me that nobody else has ever liked before, and I—" Zoë swallows hard. "I believe him."

"Zoë," Nanaba says, and Zoë's sure if her friend were in the same room, she'd be giving her one hell of a hug, "this is Levi, right? Mr. Grumpypants? I'm sure he's not the type to say nice things if he doesn't mean them."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"It's okay to believe in people, Zoë."

"I just don't want to mess this up."

"You won't. Just don't force yourself to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, okay?"

"Yeah," Zoë whispers. "Thanks, Nanaba."

"You're welcome. Good night."

Zoë hangs up the phone and crawls back into Levi's bed. He's taking up most of the space himself, now, hogging the blankets and everything. It's really kind of funny how he sleeps. He's so calm during the day, but the way that he sleeps is wild and unpredictable.

Even as she moves to get into the bed next to him, he turns over again, facing away from her.

She latches onto him from behind, pulling him back against her chest before she presses her lips to the top of his head. "Night, Levi," she whispers against his hair.

He doesn't respond except to shift one of his legs so that his cold bare foot rests against her shin.

* * *

Everything happens slowly: one step at a time.

Zoë's never dated like this before.

As a teenager there had never been natural progression at all: holding hands to little kisses to longer kisses to awkward touches. By the time she'd gone out with William, well…she had accepted that a first date could mean anything from no physical contact at all to having sex twice.

Levi drags all of the steps out over the entire summer.

He says it's because he promised her they'll take as long as she needs, but Zoë thinks maybe he needs time, too. Their histories are different, but there are similarities there, like in the hesitant way they dare to trust other people and even each other.

They do open up, though. They talk more. Zoë tells him about the falling out with her parents and Levi talks, in bits and pieces over the weeks, about the foster homes he's been in.

When he tells her about the last one, the one he ran away from, the one that he chose homelessness over, well, he struggles through it. But he still talks to her—really talks. He doesn't just tell her that it was kind of crappy. He explains that the man picked him up and that they lived in a decent house. They had a nice kitchen, and in the kitchen was a chair, and that was his chair. That was where they kept him, in the corner of the kitchen out of their line of sight.

"They just wanted the money from taking care of some poor kid," he tells her, smirking a little.

She wonders how long it took him to figure that out—tries to imagine a young teenage Levi sitting in a chair in the corner of a kitchen in some house somewhere. Sleeping there at night and everything.

"Wasn't allowed to talk," he adds. And then, a moment later, "She fed me Jell-O once. Just the powder, really. It was really cheap to buy back then."

"How long did you stay?"

"Two weeks. I took food after a few days. A spoonful of peanut butter one night. I washed the spoon and put it back." He shrugs and doesn't look at her. "It didn't take them long to catch on. The woman caught on first, of course. And she did a lot of yelling, but it was hard to care. I was so goddamn hungry—what else was I supposed to do? But the next time the husband noticed food missing. He went after his wife first, and then he went after me. I left after that bullshit. Got more food out of dumpsters than in that house."

* * *

It's after some stupid movie about chance that Zoë brings up destiny. The credits are still rolling to some ridiculous pop music and Sunny is stretched out on the floor by their feet. "Do you believe in that stuff?" she asks Levi.

He tilts his head to the side and gives her an odd look. "What?"

"Destiny. Luck. That kind of stuff."

"They're two different things."

"Yeah, well. I mean, do you believe in luck? In chance? That some things are up to luck? Like meeting the right people?"

"If there's good and bad luck, then that's just life," he tells her, voice a bit flat. "You can't believe in good luck without believing in bad luck, and if there is both good and bad luck, how can there be luck? They just balance each other out. Like a negative and positive number or some shit like that."

She laughs and leans her head back against the couch, picking idly at her sweatpants.

Levi watchers her for a moment, but he's grown used to her; Zoë's practically transparent to him, now. A year ago, the thought would have been terrifying to, but now it's kind of nice. It's almost comforting.

"What're you spacing off for?" he asks when she looks up to meet his eyes.

"Thinking about destiny," she says. "When I was a kid—" She swallows hard. "Look, nobody ever believes this, but… when I was a kid there was this girl I just…had to talk to. Had to. I can't explain it. It was like—like I was being pulled in her direction. Not pushed. Pulled. I don't expect you to believe it. Everyone thought I was crazy. We were really good friends until she had to move away."

"Huh," is all Levi can say, and Zoë doesn't blame him for that.

She feels her face turning red. "Well, I've felt it since, then. Uhm. I've told you about Nanaba—I felt that same pull toward her. Like I was fated to meet her. And Erwin. Mike, too. And then there were others; sometimes the pull isn't very strong but sometimes it is… And then there was you."

She hates that she can't explain it better than this, better then fragmented pieces, but Levi lifts an eyebrow when she refers to him.

"Me?"

"Yeah. I just—I felt this…tug. Sort of. And I didn't see anyone. I've always felt it when I really  _looked_  at someone. It was never a pull in a general direction before. But I followed it, and there you were. Walking by yourself. I took a picture of you to send to Nanaba and when I was trying to put my phone back, well, that's when Sunny got loose and ruined your shoes."

"I saved the shoes," he says.

"Yeah, well. It sounds dumb, probably. I don't think I believe in luck. I'm more of a destiny sort of person. Something like that, anyway."

"It's kind of hard to believe," he admits, but then opens his mouth again.

"What?" she asks when he just stands there as if he wants to say something but doesn't.

"I used to have some crazy-ass dreams."

"Yeah? About what?"

"You." His brow furrows slightly. "I think. I've always had…violent dreams. I don't remember much about them, but I remember being one of those kids who—" he breaks off, but then swallows hard and forces himself to continue. Zoë can tell that he's trying hard to keep his voice nonchalant. "I was one of those kids who wet the bed when they were way too old to be doing that," he admits. "I guess they were pretty scary dreams for a kid, but I never could explain them to anyone. They were just…extremely violent."

"Blood and guts and stuff?" she asks.

"Yeah, I guess so. People dying in disgusting ways. Stuff like that. There's never been an explanation for it, really. My mom thought I must have snuck down to the TV and watched a horror movie or something when she was passed out drunk or whatever. Before foster care, I mean. But I don't remember ever doing that."

"I was in those dreams?"

He shakes his head. "No. Not those. I had other dreams. Usually just before dawn. They were… I'd be…" He falls silent and frowns in concentration. "I'd have these dreams of sitting with someone. Or maybe we'd be lying down together on a bed or the grass or—I don't know. Everything was blurred and nothing was ever fucking clear. Except a few really stupid things."

"Yeah?" she asks, taking his hand in hers. "Like what?"

"Like glasses. They were wearing glasses. And they had this nose… It wasn't the kind of nose you usually see. It was—I swear it was your fucking nose."

There are other details he shares. The person with him was taller than him, and the entire dream was just about them sitting together holding each other until the sun rose. Then he'd wake up and that was that.

"Usually I'd tell some asshole whose dog just muddied my shoes to go the fuck away, but…"

"You saw my magnificent nose?" she suggests.

"I thought I was going crazy. Felt like some movie-worthy shit."

"It really was," Zoë laughs. "Except more embarrassing. Sunny's never taken off after anyone else, though, before or since then."

"Squirrels," Levi points out, and grunts when she hits him over the head gently with one of her throw pillows.

* * *

By the end of June Zoë's made a lot of progress; she's learned to keep her eyes open and her hands busy and to focus on who she's with rather than what's happening.

It makes a strange sort of sense. She doesn't want anything to happen if it's not Levi doing it, anyway.

When July ends, he can kiss her neck anywhere, and her reaction will be favorable. There is such a stark difference in how Levi speaks to her when he's kissing her, and how her exes spoke—if they ever said anything at all beyond orders for her to move over or lift her knees higher—that she's embarrassed she ever had a flashback at all.

"Stop bringing that up," Levi tells her once. "You couldn't help it. End of fucking story."

"I'm still sorry it happened."

"I'm only sorry because it sucked for you to deal with and it scared the shit out of me. But because of it we talked about it. Don't be sorry."

* * *

It's the second of August when Levi touches her for the first time.

When she gets home from work she switches her boots and stained pants for bare feet and a pair of comfortable workout shorts. Levi stops by before he leaves for work, and things go from there on the couch in her living room.

When he touches her, her shorts are low on her hips and her work shirt is still on but unbuttoned; she's practically sitting in his lap; his lips are on the back of her neck.

The sound she makes when his right hand slides inside her underwear is both pleased and embarrassed.

He smirks against the back of her shoulder and moves his left hand up her waist to rub her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. "Careful," he teases, circling the fingers of his other hand around her clit as slowly as humanly possible. "Keep making sounds like that and your neighbors'll be complaining."

He takes his time with her. He has an hour before work when he shows up at her house and he spends the last thirty minutes of it on her.

After he finishes her, she leans back against him, feeling dazed, and he kisses her cheek. Even though she can't see it, when he says, "Goddamn you're wriggly," she can picture the smirk on his face.

Even so, she asks, almost hesitantly, "Is that bad?"

He scoops her up and turns to dump her beside him on the couch. "No," he says. "It's…you."

And then he's up and straightening his work clothes and she's grabbing onto his pant leg asking, "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You just—" She can feel her face flushing more than it already is, but she makes herself ask it. "It's not fair if I get off and you don't."

He stops tucking his shirt into his pants to stare at her. "Zoë. Relationships have that give and take shit. A little bit of it, anyway. You know, watching some stupid chick flick if that's what the person you're with wants to do. Sex isn't about give and take."

"But it's nice to—"

He presses his finger against the tip of her nose. "There are no obligations when it comes to sex. I did this for you because I wanted to, not because I expected something in return. Got it?"

She nods, though it's a bit jerky.

"Good," he tells her. "I'll be late for work if I don't hurry."

After buttoning her shirt, she helps him get his things together and then sees him to the door. He's halfway down her front porch steps before he turns around and comes back.

She's about to ask what it is he's forgotten when he pulls her down for a kiss.

"Almost forgot to say this," he says, smirking at her. "You saying my name like that was pretty fucking hot."

* * *

Zoë proposes to Levi on her birthday.

Both have the day off, and they spend it doing whatever they want. Neither of them are especially ambitious. They eat breakfast together and watch  _Star Wars: A New Hope_  and then  _The Empire Strikes Back_ , and then they walk down to the park with Sunny and spend twenty minutes arguing about which one of them is more like Han Solo, and which is more like Leia Organa.

"She keeps her dress so clean," is Zoë's argument. "You are Princess Leia."

Levi finally caves in with, "I guess Han Solo is scruffy but he's charming in a shitty sort of way. Like you."

Most of the rest of the walk is in silence. September is a nice month; it's still warm but things are about to change and Zoë has always liked that about it. The October chill isn't present yet, but the August heat has eased up.

"Hey, Levi?" she asks when they're almost back to her house.

"Hm?" he asks, and then, when she doesn't respond right away, he glances over at her. "What?"

"You know, Han and Leia get married in the  _Star Wars_  books."

Levi comes to a screeching halt, and Zoë manages to stop a moment later. Sunny pulls on her leash, confused at the sudden delay.

Levi stares at her for a long moment before he says, "Is that a hint?"

"No." She grins, filled with—well, maybe not courage, but  _something_. She feels daring and silly and she loves Levi more than she ever thought she could love another person.

"Then what—"

"It's a proposal," she clarifies, pulling Sunny back to her side. "What do you think? Wanna get married?"

He just looks at her for another long moment. She lifts an eyebrow as if to assure him that her offer is serious.

He lets out a sigh and laughs a little under his breath. "I can't believe you—goddammit Zoë, what the hell. Okay. Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'll marry you."

Zoë grins, grabs Levi's hand, and pulls him toward her house. "Really?" she asks again and again, all the way home. "Are you sure?"

He responds every time with, "Yes, I said I'd marry you."

The last time she asks it, standing in front of her door, she says, "Why?"

And he rolls his eyes. "Why else, shitty-glasses? I love you."

Zoë almost bursts with excitement to hear those words. She's heard them before—in roundabout ways, whispered into her hair or against her shoulder; he even muttered it in his sleep once.

But this is the first time he's said it so bluntly, and she knows exactly how to respond to it.

Turning him to face her, she stares at him, unable to squash her grin.

"I know," she says, and runs into the house laughing.

Behind her, Levi almost chokes and then grumbles, "Of course you had to say that. Han-fucking-Solo."

* * *

At first they plan a real wedding. Zoë writes a list of guests and almost all of them are people she knows.

Levi says he doesn't know if he wants to invite his parents.

Zoë looks at dresses online and nothing sparks her interest.

Two days after she proposes to him, she calls him on the phone while he's at work.

"Everything okay?" is the first thing out of his mouth.

"Do you  _want_  a wedding?" she asks. She thinks it's better to just be blunt.

"What?"

"Do you want a wedding? You know, the ceremony that people go through to get married? That thing?"

"I know what a wedding is," he tells her. "Do  _you_  want a wedding?"

"Well." She hesitates. Bites her lip. Chews on it for a moment. "I guess I don't really care if I have one or not."

"Hn."

"It's you I want, Levi, not the wedding."

"I'll come over after work. We can talk."

He does, and they do. It's quite simple, really: a wedding just doesn't matter enough to either of them to make it worth the planning and the hassle. Having friends over for a potluck on the weekend feels nicer.

The next day, on Zoë's lunch break, she meets Levi at the courthouse, and they are married. Levi goes with her back to his apartment.

While he's getting ready for work, Zoë starts calling people to invite them to a slightly delayed wedding reception of sorts: first she calls Mike, who immediately offers to make the cake, and then Nanaba.

She doesn't expect Nanaba to offer to bring a cake. Zoë decides she has the best friends in the world; two people who will make cakes for a silly not-really wedding reception being held at the park the second weekend in September with hardly a week's notice?

When Nanaba asks, "Are you happy?" Zoë doesn't know what to say at first.

She finally settles for the truth. "Nana," she says quietly, hoping Levi can't hear her from the bathroom, "I didn't think anyone would ever like me enough after getting to know me to want to marry me."

Nanaba's voice gets a little choked when she says, "I'm glad," but Zoë doesn't comment on it. She lets her friend tell her to go hang out with her grumpy husband and by the time Levi walks into the room dressed for his shift, she's grinning like a dope and almost crying besides.

"The hell happened in the last ten minutes?" he asks, looking alarmed.

"Nothing," Zoë says, and grabs him up in a tight hug. "I just have the best friends ever."

* * *

Levi gets them both wedding bands before the not-reception. They're very simple, but Zoë's never been one to fall in love with fancy jewelry, anyway. She thinks the plain band suits her just fine; it looks nice and anyway, it's what it stands for that makes her grin when she catches a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye.

She spends the reception flitting around greeting people, laughing, hugging everyone who will let her; she finds kids playing tetherball and hopscotch and swinging on the swings and invites them to join the fun because there are a lot of people but there is way too much food.

Mike tries to sort of hide himself in the crowd, but he's so tall that Zoë has no trouble finding him and yanking him to the front of the group to show him off. The wedding cake is astounding and he deserves to be recognized for it. It's huge and roundish and the  _Millennium Falcon_  is iced onto the top of it.

Mike shakes Levi's hand and kisses Zoë on the cheek and says, "You said you wanted something fun, so…"

* * *

Zoë doesn't miss the fact that Nanaba asks after Mike. Zoë's never been the type to try to hook up her friends for romantic purposes—not after the mistakes she's made in her own life. But Nanaba's always been determined to do things her way, anyway; she's never really believed in all that destiny stuff that Zoë does.

But something about it, about Nanaba speaking to Mike, just seems…right.

So Zoë points her friend to the trees where Mike's trying to hide from the crowd of people.

* * *

Almost a week after the wedding reception, Zoë receives a text from Nanaba while she's in bed curled up with Levi. They still haven't figured out what they'll do with Levi's apartment, and Zoë doesn't care.

The text says, "Had a date with Mike tonight."

Zoë's appalled that Nanaba would dare to leave her hanging like that, so she excuses herself from the room and then dials her friend's number.

"Hello?" Nanaba asks.

"A date! You didn't tell me you had a date with him!"

"It was kind of impromptu."

"Not  _that_  impromptu," she laughs. "How was it? He's such a gentleman."

"He's really—something else."

"Yeah. He's great. Did he kiss you or was he too shy?"

"Too shy," Nanaba says, voice sounding almost dreamy. "I kissed him instead."

"Hah! Good, good. Are you going out again?"

"Thursday."

"You like him a lot?"

"Well, it was just one date, but there  _is_  something about him… Yeah," Nanaba almost giggles, "I think I really do like him a lot. Isn't that weird after just one date?"

"Well, I'm not the best person to ask."

"Hey, Zoë?"

"Yeah?"

"You know that destiny stuff you used to always go on about?"

"I still talk about it sometimes."

"Well, I wanted to say that—well, maybe there's some truth to it after all. I don't know. I just—I used to have these  _dreams_ , and…they were so dumb."

Zoë has to sit down in a kitchen chair. "What? You never told me!"

"I didn't really think they meant anything."

"Well, tell me what they were!"

"It was just—I'd be holding someone's hand. Both of them were like that. They didn't make any sense. But I compared everyone's hand to the hand in my dream. I just…never found a hand that felt the same. Nobody else's was right."

"Mike…?" Zoë asks.

"Yeah. I shook his hand at your reception thing and I almost had a stroke on the spot, I swear. It was—I mean, it's his hand. In those dreams. Or a very interesting coincidence."

"Wow."

"Yeah, so. Maybe I believe in it a little bit, now. Just thought you should know. And also about the date. We went to a movie and then had dinner. Super casual. You know I don't mind dressing up but it makes a first date extremely awkward. Casual was nice and comfortable."

Zoë talks to Nanaba for another ten minutes, and then lets her go.

She's grinning like a fool when she slips back into bed with Levi.

He holds her close, puts his head on her shoulder, yawns in her ear and then asks, "Where'd you go?"

"Nanaba went out with Mike," she says, dopey expression still on her face. "I got the details."

"Good date?" he asks.

"Yeah, really good. She uhm. She said that she used to have dreams. Like yours. Well, not like yours—not violent. Someone was holding her hand. She says that the hand in the dream is the same as Mike's."

He pulls back to kiss her nose and then settles back down again. "Does that mean she believes in your destiny stuff now?"

Zoë laughs and says, "Well, something like it, anyway."


End file.
